Jenna Elfman is not going anywhere on Shifting Gears just because she has added another Fox series to her schedule. Tim Allen said the actor will appear in most of the new season of the comedy, easing concerns that her new role on The Interrogator would pull her away from the Matt-Eve storyline.
The update matters now because the new season is set to begin production in late July, and viewers have been wondering whether Elfman’s move to series regular status on The Interrogator might cut short her run as Eve. Elfman had already made the overlap look manageable once before, appearing in nine episodes while also filming AMC’s Dark Winds, but her latest job raised a fresh question about how much time she could still spend on Shifting Gears.
Elfman addressed that concern at the Fox Upfronts, saying she can “go play on Shifting Gears” while taking on The Interrogator. Allen clearly wanted that answer. He said he and Elfman had recently gone to see No Doubt with a group at The Sphere in Las Vegas, where she told him the arrangement would work only if she could do eight episodes with him. “God, I’m glad that you said this,” he recalled telling her.
That leaves Allen with what he described as a welcome problem: the romance between Matt and Eve has opened up a different side of the show, but he is not eager to rush it. He said the flirting and the actual activity between the characters is working, that it has brought a different audience to the series, and that he wants to stretch things out so the pair are “just dating a little bit.” At the same time, he admitted he is uncomfortable with how far the relationship could go, even while saying it is succeeding as written.
Allen said he does not yet know whether Eve will move in with Matt or whether Matt will move in with her when the season starts, only that he and the showrunner’s team have surprised him before. He also said he loves doing the show and wants to keep working with Elfman, who suggested he could even make a cameo on The Interrogator. For now, the immediate answer is simple: Elfman remains part of Shifting Gears for most of the season, and the bigger question is how long the writers can keep the romance in the sweet spot before it has to change.
